Friday, February 1, 2013

Andrew Bolt trends towards dodgy graphs

I don’t normally blog about Andrew Bolt, because really, what’s the point? The bloke struggles with basic levels of research (a fact I have encountered personally) and hell, his stuff is pretty much pure opinion (or the opinions given to him by his readers), so there’s not much point saying I disagree with him because, well everyone is entitled to their opinions.
But today he decided to try his hand with some graphs.
The settings for this foray in to the graphic world of data was a comment by Craig Emerson on Twitter with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki:

In the faint hope Emerson can be educated

One man presents science on the ABC. The other is a senior minister in the government that’s imposed the carbon tax.

You would expect both not to be so ignorant about the very basic data on global warming:

Now it’s a brave man who starts calling others ignorant especially one who is not exactly known for his superb research skills.
In order to prove to Emerson and Dr Karl that they were ignorant Bolt tried his hands at graphing some data.
Now look. I don’t want to get all “demarcation dispute” with Andrew on graphs. Sure they’ve become a bit of my thing. And sure I probably have a passion for graphs that rather goes beyond the healthy stage. But here’s the thing. When I use a graph I know that I have to be just as careful in how I present that graph as I do when I write words, because you can lie just as easily with a graph as you can with words, and I don’t want anyone accusing me of attempting to defraud the public by presenting data that is actually false or misleading.
Bolt presents 5 graphs and I will show them all screenshot just to prove I’m not making this up (because by the time you get to the end of this you’ll be sure I am).
First he presents a “graph” from the Met Office in the UK:

It’s not really a graph worth considering because where the temperature was in January 1997 and December 2012 doesn’t actually say much about the trend, but it does nicely convey to his readers that there has been no increase in temperatures. This graph he’s clearly lifted from somewhere – probably the Watts Up With That website, as that’s usually where he gets his climate change “scoops”.
But then Bolt really goes wrong, because instead of grabbing a graph from somewhere else, he astonishingly decides to do some work himself and produce his own graphs.
He went to the great website Wood for Trees which has pretty much all the data on global temperature recordings you could want. It is a neutral site. No one disputes the data it provides. And best of all it allows you to use that data to make graphs. You can do graphs according to any time period and using a raft of different measures.
Here for example is a graph I made using the GISTEMP data (the NASA guys) from 1972-2012:

I have screen capped it all to show you how these graphs are made. Series 1 – (the red line) is “GISTEMP LOTI global mean from 1972”. LOTI stands for “Land-Ocean-Temperature Index. Series 2 (the Green line) is the Linear Trend from 1972 of “GISTEMP LOTI global mean”.
As you can see it’s a nice upward trend.
Have a look also at the top left of the graph. It clearly labels the red and green lines.
OK. Now here’s the graphs Bolt used and his captions for them (and remember he prefaced these graphs by saying “In the foolish hope that these two men may reconsider their opinions after consulting the evidence”:
First up is UAH. This is the data from the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and it measures “Tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperature data collected by NOAA's TIROS-N polar-orbiting satellites and adjusted for time-dependent biases by the Global Hydrology and Climate Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH)”. OK that’s a mouthful but I want to be exact about what it is.
OK. Let’s have a look at this graph. Go up to the top left. What do you see? You see the red line is “uah/ from 1997”, which is what it should be, but the green line – the linear trend line – is from “rss/ from: 1997/ trend”.
That is, the trend line is not the trend of the red line. It is not the trend line of UAH data, it is the trend line of “rss data from 1997”.
What is rss? Well that is also done by NOAA but it is their “remote sensing system’s microwave sounding units”. It rather nicely has shown a flat trend since 1997.
But that is not what Bolt is saying this graph is suggesting.
What he is saying is that the green line shows the trend of UAH measurements has been flat since 1997 – it “confirms” it to use his exact word. .But what he actually has shown is two different measurements. And the measurement he has used as the trend line is from data that reveals a flat trend line. But what about the actual UAH temperatures? Have they been flat?
Let’s use the same data Bolt has used but instead of the “rss linear trend” let’s actually use the UAH data to make a trend – because that is what he is saying his graph displays:
Notice anything different? Like the fact the linear trend is now clearly heading up?
How astonishment.
OK onto his next graph and here we at least see some honesty, because (what a surprise) it is the RSS graph! The trend certainly is flat – if anything it might even be going downwards.
I have no problems saying that, because I trust the data and I am not afraid of admitting what it shows – even if it contradicts the argument I might wish to make about climate change.
But after the one honest graph of the RSS he quickly moves on to the next bit of “evidence”. We now come to our old friend GISTEMP:
Notice anything about that top left corner? Yep the wonderful “rss from 1997” trend line.
Gee how did that get there?
Now anyone with mathematical knowledge slightly above that exhibited by the ape creatures of the Indus (thank you Black Adder) would look at that graph and think hang on, that green line isn’t anywhere near the middle of the red lines – which is usually the case for trends (scratch that, not usually – always). But not our Andy. He saw it, and slapped it on his page with a Huzzah you ignorant Craig Emerson, can’t you see even NASA knows temperatures have stopped warming!
Well OK, let’s put in the GISTEMP data to get a linear trend and see what pops up:
Hmmm. Now I may be seeing things all crooked after spending two weeks watching Channel 7’s coverage of the tennis, but that green trend line looks to be going up.
OK now he goes back to the UK Met Office and their “HADCRUT” data:
Don’t you love the nonchalant “ditto” like he has this whole climate change thing sewn up. And don’t you also like how when you look at the top left corner once again he is using the RSS data to represent the trend for different data. Once again even a basic knowledge of maths would have you realising that that green line could in no way be the trend of the red line.
But not Andrew Bolt. He saw that, saw nothing wrong with it. He put it on his blog and thinks QED.
Note as well that Bolt has used “HADCRUT3”, which has now been superseded by HADCRUT4.
OK what is the real HADCRUT3 trend
Again we see a trend line that is going up. Now sure it is only just going up and I wrote about this on The Drum a couple weeks back. Although it was only just going up I still noted it, even though I was trying to show that climate change is causing temperatures to rise. I did that because I am honest with data and am not trying to pretend the facts are one thing when they are something quite different.
Now Bolt used HADCRUT3. Why didn’t he use the more recent version, HADCRUT4? Maybe because then the trend would look like this:
You can’t even pretend that trend is flat. Also it clearly shows that even by the UK data, 1998 was not the hottest year.
I guess Bolt just wasn’t aware of that data.
Bolt then quotes NASA head climate honcho James Hansen:

An admission from the godfather of global warming, NASA’s James Hansen:

Well OK, but Emerson and Dr Karl was talking since 1998 which is rather a tad more than 5 years (I’m not 100% sure on this, but I sure as hell hope Bolt realises that 2012 minus 1998 is not 5). So Hanson’s quote would be worth citing if Dr Karl had said “the world has warmed in the past 5 years”.
Incidentally here’s the GISTEMP for the past 5 years
Yep it is flat.
But here’s the thing. Who gives a damn? No one tries to measure changes in the climate in just 5 year blocks because it is completely meaningless. Here’s what running (reader kalusfloozy rightly points out these means aren’t running [and I didn’t intend them to be either, so sloppy adjective use there]) 5 year trends look like on the graph I had earlier of GISTEMP from 1972
As you can see some went down, some went flat, some went up. But the trend since 1972 is obvious.
Now look, Bolt normally does such cherry picking. It’s intellectually dishonest, but maybe he actually does believe 5 year trends are important.
But when it comes to representing trends on a graph and suggesting that they show something which they do not, well that is not just intellectually dishonest; it is completely so.
But here’s the kicker he ends his graphs with a quote from Phil Jones regarding temperatures from 1995 to 2009. I’m not sure why Bolt is not concerned about the past 3 years, but oh well, let’s stick with what he thinks is irrefutable evidence.
The line Bolt quotes is this:

I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.

Rather hilariously he got this line from the great blog Skeptical Science (he even links to it!), which has the quote in full:

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods. BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
Phil Jones: I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

Bolt for some reason didn’t graph 1995-2009, so I’ll do it for him, using HADCRU4 as that is Phil Jones’ data:
Bolt ends his diatribe of misleading information and context-slaughtered quotes by writing:

Do Dr Karl and Emerson truly dispute this evidence? Are they so in denial?

PS: an apology would be nice.

It takes a hell of a lot of front to demand an apology after misleading the public and displaying an utter ignorance of statistics.
Andrew Bolt doesn’t deserves an apology, he deserves censure. UPDATE
Bolt has now changed his post stating:

That’s not quite accurate either. As you can see from above he “inadvertently” used three graphs with the wrong trend line, not two.
He puts up the correct HADCRUT graph – still using HADCRUT3 not HADCRUT4. Rather oddly however he doesn’t put the the GISTEMP graph on this new updated blog, he just links to it. And he completely ignores the UAH graph!
Pathetic, really.
****
I note that on some browsers the graphs aren’t coming up. I use Chrome and it seems fine on them, but not on explorer (although you can right click and “show graphs”) and on Firefox it’s just the link. I don’t know why – as I put them up the way I do all my other graphs in the past. Will try and sort it out.

61 comments:

Censure would be too good for Bolt. Besides, he'll defend to the death his right to be an utter fkn moron. I despair at the dissonance between readers of Bolt's blog and Grog's Gamut. If there are any Bolt readers reading this, all I ask is why, just why?

Andrew Bolt clearly never had to study statistics or research methods in whatever tertiary study he might have done (if he did, he either failed miserably or has forgotten every last word of it). Anyone with even the slightest hint of a statistical or mathematical background would be looking at those graphs and recognising them for the utter lack of proof they are. Clearly the man is suffering from an advanced case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, and believes himself to be far more expert at statistics than he really is. What I can't forgive, however, is the way he apparently thinks the majority of Australians are fool enough to believe him.

Well done! Good to see sense used to take down the man that Chris Berg of IPA fame compares to Socrates. Socrates may have started from ignorance, while our Boltian pal seems to start and finish and positively wallow in ignorance.

PS Wood for Trees is a wicked cool, time waster of a web site!! thanks!

If Bolt was engaged "in commerce" he would very arguably be in breach of provisions of what used to be called the Trade Practices Act (now CCCA) restraining false, deceptive and misleading conduct. It is a great shame that in spite of the prime purpose of his employment by News Ltd is to help sell more newspapers that neither of them are likely to be held legally accountable for such gross deception of the public, many of whom may be silly enough to let their vote be influenced by such nonsense. One can only hope that this tightly argued take down generates a scandal and outcry heard far beyond the normal readership here. Many thanks Greg for raising your voice.

There's an audience of ignorant people who don't want evidence that AGW is a fact, and Bolt is just one of Murdoch's bitches who lies to them. Anyone genuinely wanting to read the arguments for and against would not venture into his cesspit.

Unfortunately for Bolt (and the planet), the yearly toll of that huge amount of extra energy in the climate system is plain to see, and that, more than any graph or squiggle Bolt can invent is gradually moving public opinion.

Great article, I concur with most of your comments. My one suggestion however is that a 5 year mean usually refers to a running mean, for example 1972-1976, 1973-1977, 1974-1978, etc. This has the function of smoothing the data so that short term trends do not mask long term trends. Using discrete time intervals has no mathematical function because it depends entirely on where you stop and start your intervals and as you correctly stated, it is completely meaningless to measure climate in 5 year blocks. Not that it changes your argument in any way but it is the more appropriate way to present the data.

Actually, further to that (now that i've woken up), you haven't even plotted discrete interval 5 year means, you've plotted 5 year trends. a mean is a single number and hence cannot be a line. you must have a series of means in order to plot a line...

On the first graph. That's the one from the Daily Mail. Not only is it cherry picking in the dates for begin and and, they also manipulated the data slightly to get it really level.http://sargasso.nl/daily-mail-manipulates-graph-to-suggest-stopped-global-warming/

Hi Steeph. Yeah I did a google search and saw it was from Daily Mail. But it was also shown on the Watts up with that blog here. I made a bit of an assumption (based on his previous "research methods") that that's where he got it from.

PS: I think the graphs not loading may have been a temporary issue, perhaps due to a busy server as tweeps awaken and click on one of the many RTs linking to your story? Both IE and firefox also now loading without issue.

Deniers get a 0.45C head start and still command odds of over 30:1 that it's not warming.

Dec12 >+0.45C over 30year Dec averages, the last contract there was a $1000 bet where the pro-science put up $995 and the denier $5, close enough 200:1 - the denier lost his $5 as it turns out - but you would think if anyone believed this rot, they would be all over this.

Could NewsLtd not put Bolt's pay through this to multiply his remuneration.

It's often said that you should never argue with an idiot because they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. However, Mr Bolt's inane assertions NEED to be argued with lest he take the lack of argument as an indication that there is no counter-argument.

It remains an open question as to whether Mr Bolt's inaccuracies were a malicious attempt to deceive his readers or merely a result of ineptitude.

Further to kalusfloozy - I agree it is a bad way to present data - that was actually my point. Talking about what the climate has done in the past 5 years (heck even 10) involves such cherry picky that it is worthless.

When I read the Daily Telegraph, I read from the front and cease reading and put the paper down when I get to the Andrew Bolt page. i.e. I don't read anything past Andrew Bolts column, nor his actually page. That means that I don't ever get to read anything past his page including advertisements. I put the paper down and do something else. The same tends to happen when I come upon Piers Akerman's page. So I wonder if the Telegraph is not delivering full value to its advertisers by promoting Bolt and Akerman towards the front of their paper?

Why? Because he actually grasps the facts and presents properly. This who article is ridiculous, it's a massive failed 'gotcha' and at the end the writer acknowledges that Bolt actually amends the graphs he makes anyway.

You warmists really are idiots, arrogant idiots to be precise. You are so convinced that you are right that you never even looked at the counter argument meaning you have no idea what you are arguing again. Yet, you are still convinced that skeptics are wrong.

Honestly what a pathetic excuse for an article this is. Basically summed up here "Bolt makes small miskate generating trend line with graph, fixes later, therefore Bolt is evil and wrong about everything!" What absolute nonsense, pure drivel. Even assuming that this he was 100% wrong and this was a huge error and he mislead about everything in it (which clearly isn't the case but let's just assume) the vast majority of what his blog references is well sourced, informative and factual and absolutely rips apart you warmists like a knife going through hot butter.

Just admit it, you hate him because he's popular and shows you up. No other reason.

Just to remind you of some basic facts, here they are:

- it was warmer 1000 years ago- it was warmer 2000 years ago- it was warmer 5000 years ago- it was warmer 60 million years ago (much warmer actually)- the rate of change over the last 2 centuries has been both constant and well within historical norms

But there is a large group of people who think that Bolt is the best thing since sliced bread! Just look at the reply to Jonny B Gone above. Some people will accept anything that comes out of Bolt as gospel truth

I love how that even when Andrew Bolt writes sockpuppet replies on people's blogs he doesn't bother to change his writing style. He's a bully who is delusional about his own competence, which I guess is why he's so popular with Murdoch paper readers. If I have to read one more article of his slobbering over Abbott I'll puke.

Great post by the way. A bit too verbose and deep for Bolt and his readers but the rest of us are appreciative.

Hi Greg,There are several levels of what climate alarmists so winningly refer to as Denial. For example, I believe there is more than sufficient evidence that the planet is currently warming, with multiple caveats given the scientific fraud and poor modelling by both sides of the argument (such as the impact urbanisation near recording stations has on local temperatures). However, historical evidence shows that this has happened previously, with and without human intervention or cause. Furthermore, I believe that most (if not all) of the anthropomorphic component of climate change can be traced directly to human use of land, not to carbon dioxide; As mentioned above, urbanisation will change localised weather and climate in a matter of years, let alone decades or centuries.

The reason we need to have a reasoned argument about the cause of climate change is so we can decide what to do about it; i.e. do we concentrate our efforts to reducing climate change itself (because it's mostly anthropomorphic), or to mitigating the effects (because we can't change the cause) ?

BTW, I believe that climate (not weather) change needs to be measured over periods much longer than those used by yourself or Bolt. Any measurements from Australian sources suffer from being less and less precise as we go back further in time.

and right on the button out come the denialists... or Bolt had a few spare minutes in between manipulating the latest data and sucking up to Rupert.Thanks for great article - can't believe that people are telling you that 5 year periods are not statistically valid when it is EXACTLY what you said throughout your article.You have the patience of a saint.

A couple of points:When those who question climate change start using language like "warmists," it's pretty clear they're using dramatic language to make up for the lack of a reasoned argument and as such, I think Denier is a reasonable term. (I'm not saying anything about your own argument, which I'm coming to.)

The problem is that we are in uncharted territory when it comes to historical trends. Pre-industrial records tell us nothing about what the climate will do after man has been using the sky as a free rubbish dump for a couple of centuries in addition to natural occurrences such as volcanic eruptions.

I don't think anyone is claiming that CO2 is the only driver of climate change. If there were a politician with the courage to point out the beef industry's contribution, I'd vote for them. The real question is that if we just went ahead and did everything we possibly could to reduce and mitigate climate change, what possible harm could it do? Industries change. Nobody cried for thousands of jobs lost in the film processing industry when we all switched to digital. If you prepare for the worst and the worst doesn't happen, you're still a winner, so one has to wonder why there is such resistance.

Actually, the key point of all of the graphs is that none of them show statistically significant trends. The closest is Phil Jones' graph, which as he notes has a probability of close to, but not below 0.05 (the normally accepted base level of significance). This has the largest data set, the longest timespan and the strongest trend; ie by far the most likely to be significant. For all the other graphs, the only scientifically valid conclusion, irrespective of whether the trendline of best fit is up or down, is that the trend is not significantly different to zero; ie it is not scientifically valid to conclude that there is any trend. So with respect, the entire piece is merely pointlessly arguing over semantics.

I live in Canberra and over educated lefty public servants like Greg Jericho are everywhere. Canberra is a sheltered workshop for the likes of Jericho. Never had an original idea in his life. Never had to work in the real world. Cocooned in the bosom of left leaning Canberra bureaucracy, it's not a hard gig. Just espouse the standard lefty mantra on climate, gays, human rights, the standard lefty shopping list, publish to all your lefty mates then sit back feeling smug and superior knowing that your bank account gets topped up every fortnight regardless. Like I said, not a hard gig, I've met hundreds like him, cookie cutter lefties, yawn...

Greg, lots of work there, but seriously the people who read Bolt aren't likely to grasp what you've written or even likely to read it (sadly).The people who read you blog probably already know what you've said.But it is nice to see that others are presenting it well.

In Andrew Bolt's defence, this actually appears to be an issue with the guy not having a clue what he's doing rather than his normal deliberate falsehoods. Because who on Earth would present those graphs and those trend lines together as meaning the same thing?

thanks for this brilliant article on A Bolt. It continues to astound me that that there is virtually no accountablity for writing and publishing such misleading and incorrect material. It is pure propaganda written to support ones own opinion or that of greedy sponsors who grease palms with silver to keep that propoaganda going. Whats worse is that it doesnt stop with Andrew Bolt, there are plenty more journos, radio jocks and newspapers who happily turn out this sort of rubbish to help sway unthinking masses. Its high time media were made more responsiblt for publishing the facts not fiction.

Bolt seems a very insecure man, wants to be seen as an expert in something and has determined that if he puts what, for him, is great time and effort in some area he will be invited to comment as such. Unfortunately he missed out on the basic training required which is the requirement of any specialisation. But hey - free speech forever

I like the way when the stupid left hears or reads something they dont like, It has to be "censured". Like some bozos are suggesting in this comments section. The left are a bunch of miserable and pathetic losers.

Anonymous. I think falsehoods or incompetent and misleading mistakes printed in newspapers or online news should be censured - not by some Govt, but by the editors of that newspaper - after all you, would hope they place some store in accuracy. But it seems you like them. Different strokes I guess.

I don't think the sockpuppet/s that just turned up on this blog to spout denialist crap understands the difference between 'censure' and 'censor'. But given the likely level of education and/or intelligence, I don't suppose we should expect any better.

Perhaps you would do well to enter the same ranges to the skeptical science trend calculatorhttp://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php

There you would find that those trends you've been plotting actually look like this:UAH (1997-2012) .106C+-.252CRSS (1997-2012) .005C+-.249CHAD4(1997-2012) .057+- .136CYup the error bars are much bigger than the trend and the trend fails statistical significance tests.Since you have declared that you are "honest with data" I'm sure you'll be happy to explain to your readers what large error bars and low significance mean when you are claiming a trend.

"So Hanson’s quote would be worth citing if Dr Karl had said “the world has warmed in the past 5 years”."

Hanson's quote explicitly said "flat for the last decade"

Last I looked a decade was 10 years.

"Also it clearly shows that even by the UK data, 1998 was not the hottest year"

It depends what you define "hottest year" to be. It seems you want to use "contained the warmest month".Sadly there are 12 months in a year, and the normal climate science definition is the average across all months. Given that there is some disagreement between the datasets about which year is the "hottest" and that the difference between the top 3 years is around .02C, I'm guessing you can't really tell anything "clearly" from these graphs.

"Bolt for some reason didn’t graph 1995-2009, so I’ll do it for him, using HADCRU4 as that is Phil Jones’ data"Jones calculated the statistically insignificant .12C trend in 2009 (hence the end date), HADCRUT4 didn't exist before 2011. So he would have used HADCRUT3.

I image the "some reason" was that Bolt's claim was for the last 16y, so while Jones' quote provides some support for his claim, it doesn't cover the period of interest.

"It takes a hell of a lot of front to demand an apology after misleading the public and displaying an utter ignorance of statistics."

Bolt has recently posted some twitter traffic from Dr Karl (recenty deleted) where he stated:"yup, world has warmed .3C in last 16 years". This doesn't seem to be supported by any of the datasets or your graphs. I can't wait for your take-down of the good doctor ...

Further to your background research in this article:"What is rss? Well that is also done by NOAA but it is their “remote sensing system’s microwave sounding units”."

No, not even close.RSS is a company, Remote Sensing Systems, they are private and not owned by NOAA, its main products are its analysis of satellite derived data and the production of datasets. It doesn't own or build or supply MSUs to NOAA. It receives raw data from NOAA.

MSUs (Microwave Sounding Units, and the newer A(advanced)MSU are mounted on NOAA satellites and measure "brightness" in a section of the Earth's atmosphere. This "brightness temperature" is then processed to produce an atmospheric temperature.

UAH (University of Alabama, Huntsville) & RSS use the same data, i.e. the stuff coming from NOAA [A}MSUs,but process it differently.

You said so eloquently in your post:"Now it’s a brave man who starts calling others ignorant especially one who is not exactly known for his superb research skills"

As I read this, why did I suddenly have images of glass houses and rocks falling from the sky?

I don't really pay too much attention to graphs as they can be twisted into showing pretty much anything as your article demonstrates.

What I took from Bolts article was that MET is unable to show any significant measured warming over the last 16 years:

"The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming."

Your article does nothing to dispute this or the fact that Dr Karl aka Dr Google was clearly wrong.

Your rant in reply is so full of errors and bile I wonder why you bothered. Does Bolt get to that much.

This one is a classic though

" The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.

Well OK, but Emerson and Dr Karl was talking since 1998 which is rather a tad more than 5 years (I’m not 100% sure on this, but I sure as hell hope Bolt realises that 2012 minus 1998 is not 5). So Hanson’s quote would be worth citing if Dr Karl had said “the world has warmed in the past 5 years”.

I love how you totally confuse 5 year mean and five years.

Goes to show the level of checking you did your own pile of bile. Slow down Jericho. You embarrass yourself in your haste to fire the odd angry shot. Never hit enter while mad son. And do read a bit more widely. Any person who describes sceptical science as a great blog truly needs to get out more often.

Anyway stay classy kid. I trust you will now also ask why Karl and Emmerson are spreading falsehoods when your "research" and comments theron have shown them to be incorrect and you in denial.

Harry, that's fair enough - my description of rss was wrong. My description of rss as NOAA's was misleading. I intended to suggest essentially as you did much better that "UAH (University of Alabama, Huntsville) & RSS use the same data use the same data, i.e. the stuff coming from NOAA [A}MSUs,but process it differently."

Actually your description is much better mostly because it further demonstrates just how different the two measures are and why they shouldn't have been used on the same graph.